Hidden History of Portland, Oregon by JD Chandler

Author:JD Chandler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation (1914) spurred a national resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. By 1923, the KKK had as many as twenty thousand members in Oregon, and it exercised significant political power until its elected candidates were implicated in a corrupt construction deal involving the new Burnside Bridge. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress.

Cannady was right to oppose the showing of the film. Although technically brilliant and innovative, incorporating many new cinematic techniques and devices, the film’s hateful politics and emotional manipulation made it dangerous. After the film’s opening in Atlanta, the Ku Klux Klan, a guerrilla organization that had been formed to force black Southerners into subservience during the Reconstruction period, was revived as a “fraternal” organization. The KKK gained national prominence, attracting support in northern and western cities where it had no historical basis. By the 1920s, the resurrected Klan was a political power at the local and state levels in several communities, including Portland.

Beatrice Cannady’s political protests were important because they became a rallying point in the black community and a strong organizing tool, but her most effective work was as “goodwill ambassador between the races.” She kept up a demanding schedule of speaking engagements, especially in the high schools, and hosted interracial teas at her home that promoted racial understanding and acceptance. Her teas were one of her most radical and effective inventions. The teas usually included musical entertainment and speakers designed to demonstrate the cultural achievements of African Americans. She invited racially mixed groups to enjoy entertainment and refreshment in her home and encouraged intermingling and “getting to know one another.” Believing that anyone could sit in a public place with anyone else, she felt that getting people to cross racial barriers was an important part of the process. Using her home as a welcoming, cultured environment, she encouraged white people to overcome prejudice and come in. Many whites were afraid to enter the homes of black people because of racial stereotypes and beliefs and were pleasantly surprised by the comfortable and intellectually stimulating environment that Cannady created. Soon her teas were being attended by racially mixed crowds of one hundred to two hundred, and several other Portlanders, both white and black, began to hold interracial parties and teas in their homes.

While Beatrice Cannady worked tirelessly to improve race relations by promoting mutual understanding and respect, racism was increasing in Portland. In 1919, the Portland Board of Realtors (PBR) included a clause in its code of ethics barring realtors from selling property in a neighborhood to anyone who would bring down property values in that neighborhood. This effectively began official segregation of housing in Portland, and tacit agreements among realtors, landlords and other members of Portland’s establishment limited African Americans in Portland to buying or renting homes in the area of North Williams Avenue, which became known as Black Broadway, and the old city of Albina. Over the next two decades, Portland’s westside African American institutions were relocated across the river in North and Northeast Portland.

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